


A distant star

by acrosspontneuf (FangedAngel)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-08 02:55:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21228623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FangedAngel/pseuds/acrosspontneuf
Summary: He can’t imagine how it must feel, being part of that world beyond the sky that Cullen had always known to be unreachable, and then being stuck here, so far from home. He doesn’t understand why she looks at him like he is a good enough reason to want to stay.





	A distant star

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically a variation on a theme, a patron reward featuring a small episode occurring somewhere within the wider context of the TTC universe featuring Cullen’s POV, a lot of feeeeels and a lot of stargazing. Title and mood music are, of course, from Hozier’s Better Love. There are slight mentions of Cullen dealing with the withdrawal and everyone in general dealing with ongoing issues.
> 
> Read Katieee's [The Two Commanders](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10052990) for SO MUCH amazing goodness featuring this ship.
> 
> Rated M just to be safe because these two are very thirsty for each other (as they should be).

Cullen wakes up to the memory of her in his bed, his hands empty, pressed to sheets that have gone cold. He traces patterns from the blanket to the sheet and back again until he is sure that he is not trapped by the dreams anymore, and then he sits up and notices the sky.

The cold reaches through the ceiling to chill his skin and make his bones ache, but the night is clear and the stars are brightly captivating, even to him. They also tell him exactly where she is.

The guards he passes along the battlements are too cold to comment on Cullen’s ruffled appearance, but they both tilt their heads in the direction she has gone in after their muttered salutes.

As usual, she is standing right next to where the wall crumbles and the torches remain unlit, leaning back onto the battlement while she gazes up at the sky. As usual, it’s not the cold that steals his ability to breathe.

Commander Shepard belongs to the stars, Cullen has always known this, even before he’d understood just how true that statement was. Every time he looks at her, he expects her to vanish, expects the stars to claim her, expects her to have been only a dream.

Cullen’s fingers are stiff with cold, but when he reaches out, Shepard’s hand is warm, and she is real as she holds onto him, her thumb drawing circles in his palm. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t look at him, but she is here, so he stands next to her, watching her as she watches the stars.

He can’t imagine how it must feel, being part of that world beyond the sky that Cullen had always known to be unreachable, and then being stuck here, so far from home. He doesn’t understand why she looks at him like he is a good enough reason to want to stay.

When she speaks, she doesn’t sound quite like herself, though she is not distracted enough to keep from teasing him, as usual.

‘Looking rough, soldier,’ she says, but Cullen can see the wink she gives him because of how close he is to her. Perhaps he’s been spending far too much time with her, but he rolls his eyes, making her laugh.

'You don’t seem to have a problem with how I look, Commander.’

He is not afraid to admit that the title fits her more than it will ever fit him. It’s right there, in the rigid line of her shoulders. It’s right there, in all her scars. It’s right there, in the steely expression, in the way her eyes seem hollow sometimes. It’s right there when she wakes up gasping from dreams that are too horrific to articulate. It’s part of her, no matter how far she is from home.

Shepard is not shaking like Cullen is, but her skin is cold now, and he realises, as belatedly as usual, that he doesn’t need the excuse anyway. He holds her, and she holds him. Under the stars, they are each other’s shields. It is as it should be.

*

It is a quiet time in the Inquisition, unusually so, and Cullen becomes more and more aware of how restless Shepard is becoming. She sleeps even more fitfully than he does, which is a feat in itself, and Cullen frequently wakes to a tangled mess of sheets and her absence.

He has nothing interesting to offer her from his own pile of reports and correspondence, so she ends up going on short requisition journeys in the Frostbacks. Cullen is not surprised to hear that the bandits attempting to settle in the area have been driven away, but she comes back exhausted and short-tempered, and Cullen doesn’t quite know what to do. He wants to help, but she’s the strongest person he knows and he is only…himself.

At night, the dreams torment him not only with the past but also with images of him running after her, unable to reach her by the time she disappears, like a lost memory. He wakes up with Shepard whispering comforting sounds, his face buried in her hair, her hands holding his until he feels real again. As usual, he’s not the one helping. All he can do is draw patterns along her skin, tracing the paths of freckles. All he can do is look at the stars with her, and learn her constellations, and tell her about his.

One night, Shepard finds him at his desk, in the dark, the last of the candles having flickered out without his notice. The pain is clawing at him, his thoughts scattered, but when she walks in, he goes to her. A hint of moonlight makes its way down the ladder, and they move around each other like shadows, her hands on his hips, his hands in her hair. Time disappears with her mouth on his, with her holding him against the ladder until he forgets his own pain, until hers disappears with it.

*

Josephine is the one who suggests it, and Cullen stares at her with disbelief until he realises that he doesn’t actually have all that much to do at the moment that can’t be delegated.

The ambassador smiles at him, all innocent sweetness, but Cullen knows when he’s being -very diplomatically- led on a specific path. Luckily, a few days away from Skyhold with Shepard isn’t something that involves the Game much, so he accepts the suggestion, but he doesn’t show how content he is with it until he’s alone.

‘Would you like to accompany me on a small trip?’ he asks when Shepard walks into his office with more things from her room that she is going to leave peppered around his.

She climbs the ladder without saying anything, and Cullen tries to decipher what exactly is being moved around upstairs but he gives up by the time she slides back down in that distracting manner she has.

‘A trip to where?’ she asks in return, knocking some of his letters onto the floor before sitting on the side of his desk. Cullen supposes the indignation on his face doesn’t have as much impact as his hand finding its way to her thigh.

Her hand covers his, and he is once more distracted by his knowledge of the freckles on her palms, and he wants to kiss them, so he does.

Shepard’s expression softens as she watches Cullen, and he doesn’t remember what he was meant to tell her for a while yet.

*

They leave for Crestwood the next morning, and Cullen wonders if Shepard will complain about the early hour the entire trip. It’s just the two of them and their mounts, at Shepard’s insistence that they could very well take care of themselves on a short trip. Cullen remains unconvinced at the lack of danger, despite Crestwood now allegedly being stable in the wake of the Inquisitor’s trip, but he’s aware of his skills, and even more aware of Shepard’s.

After they cross the bridge, Shepard turns to look back at Skyhold, and Cullen, as ever, looks at her before he looks at the sight of the fortress, and his heart flutters throughout.

It doesn’t take long for her to challenge him to a race, and he learns quickly that she is now more comfortable with a mount than she’s ever been before because she leaves him so far behind he’d be embarrassed about it if he hadn’t half expected it. He can hear her laughing, far ahead, around a bend that prevents him from seeing her. Sleet intersperses with sunlight and the mountains are calm and quiet, blanketed by snow. Then he hears the telltale sound of her magic, or her biotics as she insists on correcting him, and by the time he reaches her, the bandits are fleeing in terror. Shepard turns to him, her grin as captivating as ever, and he shakes his head at her. She always runs straight into danger, and he always trails behind, hoping and praying that she’s alright. The more he wants to protect her the more he realises he can’t, and he’s still not sure how to make peace with that.

At night they build their camp and go to sleep tangled in each other in the tent they have been supplied, which is definitely far too big and imposing for just the two of them, but Josephine has spared no expense. They are only meant to drop off some supplies at Caer Bronach and to make sure that the new mayor is settling in well, but their ambassador has been acting like it’s a diplomatic mission rather than a swift journey. Shepard has not commented on it, and Cullen has followed her lead because regardless of what it is, they’re spending time together mostly away from the dealings of the Inquisition.

He wakes before light and listens to the comforting sound of her breathing and to the pattern that the sleet is drumming across the tent. It doesn’t seem like either of them has had any bad dreams, and outside everything’s frozen but here they are warm. They’ve made an opulent nest of blankets as a counter for the hard ground, and for a moment none of Cullen’s aching bones hurt him. For a moment it’s just the two of them and nothing else, just him brushing her hair very gently with his fingers until she wakes, looking more rested than she has in weeks. They leave late because he traces patterns along the freckles that lead from her collarbone to her shoulder until the sleet stops and the sun breaks through.

*

Cullen hasn’t been to Caer Bronach before, and it looks more imposing than he’d expected. There’s a veritable army of workers restoring the keep, and merchants and scouts mill around each other in a sort of organised chaos. Crestwood is also slowly but surely recovering from wounds both new and old, and Cullen feels certain that the new mayor is a veritable asset. Shepard stays behind at the keep when Cullen visits Crestwood proper, and when he returns he sees her watching him from high up in a tower, her red hair rebelling with the wind. His heart beats faster at the sight of her, and he still doesn’t know how to control that reaction, so he doesn’t even attempt it. They keep to themselves in the Keep, sharing only one room because they both know they’re well past hiding what they are to each other. Cullen collects messages for everyone at Skyhold, and Shepard trains with the soldiers and the scouts.

She also spends a lot of time chatting to the merchants, asking so many questions about their wares and their provenance and trade routes until the merchants turn beseeching eyes on anyone in the vicinity while Cullen laughs to himself while sitting on a bench across the road.

Shepard’s restlessness has vanished, and she sits with Cullen during bursts of blinding sunshine. They explore the keep together when it rains, and Cullen thinks idly that they should probably return to Skyhold soon, but this feels too much like a holiday he hadn’t realised he even needed. They climb towers together, and Shepard never looks pitying when Cullen needs to pause on the steps when the pain has him in its grip. She offers him her arm and he holds on to her and for once doesn’t feel like a laughable burden.

They watch the lake together with solemnity, her hand holding his, her head tucked under his chin, the only sound the wind tearing at the flags on the battlements. They sleep until late in the mornings and find themselves breakfast later with reddened lips and telltale flushed cheeks. It feels like a dream, a good one, but Cullen knows their duties are on both their minds with increasing urgency.

The return trip is uneventful, though longer than it should be. Cullen savours every single moment he can spend alone with her. He finds resilient flowers that he threads through her hair and she returns the gesture, and they laugh together until Cullen’s cheeks hurt, until she leads him into their tent and all he can remember for hours is her name and the way she feels, the way she makes him feel.

He takes a great deal of self-satisfaction in the times he leaves her speechless, the blush spreading from her face to her cheeks as she catches her breath, and it’s how she makes him feel every day so it’s only fair. He hides his smile in the curve of her neck but she’s aware of it anyway and she scoffs at him, ruffling his hair into an even wilder state and tipping his chin up to kiss him lazily, and Cullen still doesn’t think he deserves any of this but he is too happy to worry about his lack of worth.

*

Back at Skyhold, Cullen feels he’s probably smiling a bit too obnoxiously, even when he’s being teased incessantly about it during war councils. At nights, he takes Shepard for walks on the battlements before they go to sleep together, and they count stars together until they are worn out enough.

Some mornings, he braids her hair while she tells him about plans for the next expedition and he tells her news of his family. He is always aware that his coin rests in the pocket of her shirt, right over her heart and sometimes he brushes over it just to hear the hitch in her breath that matches his.

Cullen doesn’t think he’ll ever know if he could ever possibly be worthy of this, but she reminds him that he has it anyway. It is enough. It is as it should be.


End file.
